A Lesson in Transfiguration
by ChimericalParoxysm
Summary: Perhaps the Giant Squid is more than just a lurker of the lake...


Complete and utter boredom. What to do? _What_ to do?

I supposed I could go bother the mermaids, but their retaliation tended to be pretty nasty. I could always hang out with the grindylows, but their idea of fun was, quite frankly, a bit beyond my moral scope. My usual fallback plan was plotting revenge against my incompetent housemate who had turned me, accidentally no less, into a squid in the first place. I was fairly certain, though, that he'd been dead for several centuries at this point, and so I only used this as an absolute last resort.

Oh yes. I, the Giant Squid of the Black Lake, was once a boy. A Slytherin boy, in fact, which was one of those few facts I could still recall about my life before the tentacles. Most of my memories had turned to quagmire—the name of the twit that had left me a squid for all of eternity, for example. Not that I could truly blame him at all. We were Slytherins, out for personal gain and personal gain only. He'd clearly been a little more fearful than your average snake, however, for he'd never again come down to the lake to practice anything, let alone Transfiguration.

And so I had toiled alone. Most of the other creatures of the lake were far below my standards for company—not that this ought to mean much as a squid, but somehow it did. When the ghost of Moaning Myrtle had appeared, I'd fostered a vain hope that I might find a way to communicate to her my true nature, and that perhaps she might carry the message to someone capable of holding a wand. Sadly she wasn't remotely useful to me, and I rather tried to avoid her whenever possible. Bloody obnoxious girl.

I paused quite suddenly in my musings. _He's back_.

I rose slowly to the surface, a few yards from the edge of the lake, and sure enough there he was. He didn't really know I watched him of course—I was far below his notice—but watch him I did. It was a bit of an obsession, I supposed, and a twisted one at that, for who draws delight from watching other boys cry? But I did. Oh, did I ever.

His pureblood upbringing oozed off him in waves, and I knew it was all anyone ever saw. Malfoy. The only thing he was ever called. Perhaps I identified with him, known only for a name, rather than for the things that lay behind it. He was Malfoy, and I was the Giant Squid, and there was nothing either of us could do about it, for all that we both so clearly loathed it.

And as I watched him cry in the darkness by the lake, I wished desperately for my human hands, that I might reach out and wipe those tears away. That I might learn his true name, and whisper it with human lips. At the very least, I wished that I could remember what touching and whispering felt like, so that I might at least content myself with imagining it. The wind off the lake would muss his hair, and soon it would be free to blow softly across his face, sticking occasionally to the salty trails on his cheeks. Oh how I longed to brush the wisps away.

I didn't know why he cried, for he always came alone, and he never spoke of it to the solitude of the lake, nor to those that sometimes walked the grounds in his company. He seemed, to me, to be as lonely and as isolated as I, myself, was, and I craved the chance to change that—a chance I knew would never come.

It occurred to me, sometimes, that I might better serve myself by watching those whom I might live vicariously through, but I supposed I was probably in love with him. I couldn't be sure, for things didn't feel quite the same as a squid, emotions least of all, but there was a part of me that suspected it nonetheless. I had never been in love as a human, and the irony of being in love now, as a squid, left me bitter.

After a short time he would leave, making his way purposefully back up to the castle, his mask firmly in place and an aura of authority and determination carefully accrued around him. And I'd watch him go, for his presence and his departure was a terribly bittersweet joy, and then I'd sink—slowly, ever so slowly— back to the depths to drown in the darkness of my lonely and twisted heart.


End file.
